I took the above picture today when at the gym, demonstrating the results of my being unable to work out my left side (still!!) due to my rotator cuff surgery back in March. I am still several months away from even beginning to get back into doing exercises to build back up my left side. The drawing below isn’t quite the gross exaggeration one might think it was, is it? 🙁

The truth is that the arms it looks very different, but the important thing is that you can get recovered totally. And the good thing is that was the left side, because you write with the right arm, so… isn’t too bad…You still looking good.
Hope you get better and congratulations for all your work. I admire you.

Tom, I was into some heavy weight training a couple years ago and it is amazing how “soft” one gets when they suddenly stop. I think I spent way too much time on upper body and as a result, I am soft and doughy around the middle! I still look OK from the chest-UP , but the rest of me looks like a fat bastard……what ( training) would you recommend for the lower 50% ? (besides fewer donut lifts).
Great drawing there….I see you included the spare tire!

haha! You’d make M. Knight Shyamalan proud! PS, why work on the other side while you’re out? Won’t it be harder to even your muscles out? Is it worth it to burn the calories? I’d love to hear more about the research and thought behind that.

I am not working out my right side very hard… it’s not like I am trying to continue to build muscle on that side. I am doing “maintenance” work to try and keep my hard earned muscle as best I can, but in reality I have also lost considerable size and density on the right side… just not as much as my left side. It’s hard to tell in the picture but compared to my size and muscle density pre-injury my right arm, chest, shoulder and back are a lot smaller today.

Continuing to do some work in the gym yields many benefits. First, it keeps me in some semblance of fitness… I have stepped up my cardio and core work a lot lately. Second, there is a lot of evidence that a certain degree of “transference” takes place when working out one side of your body. The body wants to stay in balance and the electrical impulses and signals the brain sends to the side you are working out are in some form echoed to the other side as well, which helps stimulate that side into healing, rebuilding and gaining some muscle tone.

I am not worried about remaining lopsided once I start getting back into working out the left side. My size and strength will quickly catch up to the right and I will even out again fast. Once I start being able to work out completely it will take 6 weeks to build back my stability and base strength, then another 2-3 months to get back to full strength an size. I should say by April of next year i will be back to normal.